How bad would it have been to own up to what happened in Benghazi and Cairo? After the worldwide exertions of the Bush years, with their attendant expenditures and terrible loss of life, a great many Americans not only were and are weary of being perpetually waist-deep in the snake-pit that is the Middle East but also are genuinely confused about what our role in the world should be going forward. The death of Osama bin Laden combined with the drawing down of our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan might have provided an opportunity to pause and reflect, and Barack Obama was elected to the presidency partly in the naïve hope that his elevation to that office might provide a respite, a period of relative quiet. If President Obama ever intended such a thing, he has been successful to only a very modest degree: The war abroad has been expanded to include the assassination of American citizens, while the omnipresence of the surveillance state at home has been revealed as being even more complete than most of us had feared.
You need to remember the context in which the events in Benghazi took place. We had just witnessed a Democratic National Convention in which we heard assertions of this sort, proffered here by Joe Biden:
The spine of steel. Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. All that sort of thing. Back to Williamson:
It should go without saying that the Obama administration should have been forthright about what happened that day rather than try to deflect blame on to a “right-wing Christian” filmmaker and his alleged provocations. Beyond that, even with an election on the near horizon, the Obama administration probably did not really politically need to mislead the public about those events. Having our embassy in Cairo overrun was humiliating, and the deaths in Benghazi were shocking, but Americans are by this point used to seeing their countrymen killed in lands where Islam predominates, and they have suffered enough humiliations that one more was not going to cost anybody an election.I think that's right. Certainly it was embarrassing to the Democrats generally, and Barack Obama in particular, that the bluster of Joe Biden was humiliatingly wrong, but I do think they could have got by with it if they'd simply told the truth. People understand that the world is a dangerous place and we can't protect everyone, everywhere, every time.
The reason Benghazi remains an issue is that it's clear that this president, and the men and women who serve in his administration, are willing to lie about matters large and small. Sending out a senior official to tell the country that an internet video caused the death of an ambassador is a very big lie. We expect better than that.
3 comments:
Violent incidents such as Benghazi are not shocking in that environment. A miscalculation in security and mission can always happen. What frosts me is that there were several opportunities - and available resources - to relieve the ambassador and annex staff and it appears this administration sat on its hands and let them die. THAT is what I want an explanation for. Why was abandoning them considered the best possible outcome, or ultimately advantageous to our ends in the region? Why were multiple rescue missions told to stand down, and by whom? Why were there so many commanders in the region that just happened to be nearing retirement age?
What bothers me most here is that a basic tenet of "continuous improvement" is that in order to fix problems--like getting people dead--you've got to admit you have a problem. Somehow, the Obama administration convinced a critical mass at State to ignore this very basic principle.
Criminal charges or impeachment? I don't know, but if I've got people that are not capable of basic process improvement that high, I want them fired. Not retired, fired.
Crankbait, all outstanding questions.
Bubba, we can start firing some people in November.
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